


Red Dawn

by Vespertillion



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, One Shot, blood mention, contains spoilers for the snk manga, death mention, vomit mention (implied)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3292118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vespertillion/pseuds/Vespertillion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Armin contemplates the nature of life and death.  Contains spoilers for chapter 59 of the manga.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Dawn

As a soldier, the first thing Armin had killed was not a titan.

Leaning against a tree afterward, everything seemed like a haze of liquid.  First and foremost was the liquid of his sickness, then the liquefied feeling of his shaking legs, then the tears spreading across his face in a thick film, and then the liquid of the blood he could feel dripping from his hands.

Mikasa had come to him.  He couldn't find it within himself to meet her eyes.  "Have you gone through this, Mikasa?"

She froze.  "Ah..."

"I'm sorry," he said.  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."  They were the only words he could find, but they were all that was needed.  Mikasa understood.  She set her hand on his shoulder.

Sleep did not come to him that night.  He was aware of every movement of his body: his heartbeat, the blood rushing through his veins, and the incessant feeling of blood on his hands.  He turned to look at them.  They were clean, pale and ethereal in the moonlight.  It was not right.  He was tainted, he had not hesitated to shoot, there was blood on his hands and he could not see it but it was _there_.  There was blood on his hands that belonged to someone whose only crimes were having different ideals.  If she had lived, would she be going through the same things?  Would she be laying under the same moon, thinking the same thoughts?

Armin did not feel like a good person.  She had hesitated and he hadn't, and that was all it came down to.  He wasn't a good person.  To a friend, Armin had once said that it was impossible to be a good person for everyone.  He was not a good person to the woman he had killed.  He was a good person to Jean though, and at least there was that. 

_There's no way out of it_ , he thought, staring at his hand.  _If I hadn't have...  If I hadn't, Jean would be gone.  I would have felt like a bad person anyway for not saving him.  I would have been a good person for sparing her, but a bad person for not saving Jean.  This way I'm a good person for saving Jean, but a bad person for not sparing her.  There's no way out of it, there's no way out...  It's impossible to be a good person for everyone._

Killing was wrong.  It was concrete, it was a solid fact.  Killing would never stop being wrong, but in that moment, in the heat of it, it had been right.  It had been the right thing to do, or so he told himself, but the conflict between the two points made his head hurt.  He needed something solid to grasp but it seemed like all of a sudden, morals had become less and less distinct and more like smoke: a confusing, looming grey mass that constantly shifted and slipped through fingers no matter how tightly clenched.  This grey mass filled his mind now, swirling and changing and forming into the faces of Jean and his friends and the woman he had shot and killed.  He exhaled deeply, trying to channel the smoke out of his mind and into the air to no avail.

The final judgement, realized Armin, was based solely on whose life was worth more.  Certainly to him, the answer was Jean, but he was sure there was a squad not so different from his own mourning the loss of their comrade even as his thoughts ebbed and flowed.  She was so young and she looked so uncertain in the face of an uncertain death.   He--no, his _actions_ (and here he wasn't sure where to draw the line between the two) had been certain, unhesitating and unyielding. 

_You have to sacrifice your humanity in order to change anything._   He had said something to that effect once, hadn't he?  Maybe it was someone else.  He wasn't sure who said it and he wasn't really sure of anything other than the blood staining his hands and the dull ache in his head and the realization of just how tired he was of everything--tired physically, mentally, and emotionally, tired of a war he never wanted to fight, tired of seeing people die for a purpose that became progressively more unclear and confusing, tired of playing the role of a fugitive, tired of living a life like this...  He wanted to see the world, to know the world, but not like this, never like this.

Armin closed his eyes as tightly as he could, hoping to shut in a fresh wave of tears.  He thought of his childhood.  Things were easier back then.  With a small jolt of surprise, he realized this was not the first time he had killed something.

There had been a certain ant he had been watching studiously.  It was carrying a crumb that had fallen off of Armin's jacket as he leaned over it, and it was intent on carrying that crumb back to the anthill despite the harrowing terrain  of small pebbles that laid before it.  At one point, however, it had gotten turned around in the opposite direction of the anthill, and as it wandered further and further it became clear that the ant would not make it back easily.  It refused help from Armin's persistent attempts to nudge it with a blade of grass, and the more Armin tried to help it the faster it went away from the anthill. 

"I'm trying to help you!" he remembered yelling in bitter frustration.  He realized that if he stepped on the ant or pressed down on it hard enough with his thumb, it would surely die.  Despite knowing this, he did it anyway to see what would happen, and the outcome was exactly as expected.

The wave of guilt that crashed over him for killing the ant was less consequential than the guilt of taking a human life, but the emotions were the same.  The ant was lost and confused.  It wanted to take the crumb home to help its colony survive.  It was doing its best and he had killed it purely out of spite and frustration and the notion that he was capable of doing it and there was nothing to stop him.

Through his tears, Armin could make out the shape of another ant approaching the remains of the one he had killed.  It seemed confused, circling around the dead ant a few times and inspecting it closely, and then, after a brief pause, it picked the dead ant up and started towards the anthill. 

It was Armin's first lesson on the inevitability of death and the continuation of life in spite of it.  The second lesson was his parents; the third, the wall and his grandfather; after that it seemed as though lesson after lesson was repeated.  Eren.  Marco.  Numerous members of the 104th.  Squad Levi.  The young woman he had shot.  He had a vague feeling that the dreaded cycle would repeat too many times before finally running its course.  How long would it take to get there, to get to that place when death was a distant idea and he could feel the ocean on his feet and in his lungs?  When would the never-ending sky and the vastness of the salt water wash away the blood on his hands and in his soul?

The faint colors of dawn began to touch the sky.  He looked at them with tired eyes.  It was the beginning of a new day, but what did it matter?  The red of the sunlit clouds matched the red on his hands.  Perhaps it was a lesson in the passage of time, in the inevitability of life continuing in the midst of so much death.  Maybe it meant nothing at all.  And what difference did the colors of the day make when they were living in an endless night? 

Eventually, the stark crimson of the sunrise was replaced by softer, gentler colors.  The night was long, but it had ended just as it always did, and with that, Armin realized that the sun would eventually rise on this night of death, ending it with the silence of a red dawn.


End file.
